


to build a home

by thankstyler



Series: Dirk's Ocean [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety, Isolation, Rain, Short, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankstyler/pseuds/thankstyler
Summary: This is a place where I don't feel alone.





	to build a home

**Author's Note:**

> another little tidbit for the series
> 
> listen to "to build a home" by the cinematic ochestra while you read if you so wish

Rolling out of bed and onto the floor, you bump your knee hard enough to ellicit a curse. You stretch, your arms languid and fluid as they reach up. You've been here for long enough that your fingertips brush the low ceilings. The computer coons to you, but you wade through the syrup of grogginess and falter to the kitchen.

Everything around you is a mess. It's your mess, your controlled space. There are piles of clothes you've grown out of, piles of spare robotic parts and failed ideas from years ago. There's old bottles and cans, but there's a semblance of peace in the stacked books and magazines from years ago. Polaroid selfies from every year on your birthday until just last year, when the dial finally struck seventeen.

You dodge the ladder in the hallway and open the fridge, chock full of swords and a couple of apples. You grab a red one, glance out through the blackout blinds and find yourself staring you back in the reflection. Pinks crest over endless waves, oranges revolving and circling like a storm's brewing. When you turn the tap to wash your apple, nothing comes out. The rain would refill your water supply, hopefully for a couple days. You have some emergency bottles.

Instead of avoiding the ladder, you climb it and unlock the hatch that opens to the roof. You crawl to your feet, stretching until your back cracks in the whipping wind around you. The shirt you have fits you poorly, blustering around your body. You sit to watch the sunrise, an explosion of warming colors that keep diving behind mists and clouds.

The ocean is unstable, churning and folding in on itself. You eat and observe, silent even when Hal keeps trying for your attention. Your head feels utterly heavy and thick. The apple has almost no taste to you, it's just sustenance to bring you along another few hours before you'll demand something more substantial. Tides roll beneath your dangling feet, whooping against the supports for your tower of solitude.

The sun takes it's sweet time.

You toss your apple core down, until you hear a small and definitive "sploosh" from under you. The wind whistles louder than anything has in a while. The clouds are beginning to obscure the sun, and fat droplets of rain begin to fall. It's your cue to go back inside, but you don't budge until the droplets turn sharp and stiff and piercing. The trapdoor you climbed through is more than willing to let you back into the heavy air of your apartment.

When you breathe, your lungs feel like they're wrapping around the air more than taking it in. Everything in here is musty and reused. Opening the windows when there could be drones around at any time of day is stupid, so you recycle air, mostly. 

You duck inside the bathroom, flicking on the unreliable lights. Most of your power generation goes to your computers of all shapes and sizes. You open the curtains opposite your sink and turn on the shower. It heats up slowly and when you get in, it's saltwater. You can't count how many years it's been that you stopped supplying your shower with clean water and opted for salt. It's so much easier. You wash off, cleaning up some engine grease and oil. The tips of four of your fingers are blackened with caked-on gunk that's long since stained and bleeded into the cells. Combined with several industrial burns you've accidentally given yourself, you don't think they'll ever be back to normal.

You spend a while making yourself look the way you want to. It's been about a year since you cut your hair yourself, and it's almost to your shoulders when you don't pull it back or style it the way you normally want to. The salt makes it curly- not densely, but with enough natural wave to drive you fucking insane.

Your toes grip the carpet when you leave, like it's anchoring you to reality. Your voice is hoarse when you start to mumble to yourself from disuse. Unfortunately, you've never managed to find a lot of reasons to talk out loud unless you're feeling particularly seasick. You hear lapping thuds of long waves smashing into your apartment building, and rain tapping the windows. It gets so dark when storms like this linger for too long.

It makes you feel about as alone as you are.

You open up your computer and start a pesterlog with Roxy, and thus begins the trials of living at sea. Knowing that she's only so far away, and never being able to connect to her. And you worry; you worry painfully about her because she has chesspeople around her, and those drones never really do let go of grudges. She doesn't pick up right away, and you just pray she's asleep.

You falter to Jane next, who mentions offhandedly she's busy handling some wonderful confections in the oven, but promises to get back to you shortly. You tell her it's a-okay, peachy keen jellybean, and she retreats to her baking.

Jake is always last, and maybe it's because your fingers hesitate over the keys. Maybe it's because you need a haircut and you feel like he'll just know, maybe it's the snide remark Hal made in your peripherals. You ignore it all, and close the log entirely before you fuck something up. Before it even starts.

Hal's text-to-speech almost spooks you when it activates.

"You know he wants to hear from you. What are you avoiding?"

You remain in a steely determination of silence and lost thoughts, lost time, lost. He never really bugs you anymore, doesn't dig too far in unless he knows you're making the wrong choice. But, considering he's admittedly a strange splinter of you, he should start considering that it's weird to have different ideas than... well, himself.

"Oh, come _on_ , Dirk. Maybe he wants to know if you're okay. It's been fourteen hours, thirty six minutes and fourteen seconds since you last sent him anything worthwhile."

"It doesn't matter."

But you hover over your keyboard again, before prompting it back to Jake and sending a simple "hey", which you immediately want to take back because who are you? Who is this Dirk that texts first? He probably won't even-

"Told you so."

You deactivate Hal's text-to-speech and focus just on Jake, just on having a normal conversation. Just... focus. But your control is taking a little too much slack and you're teetering. Dehydrated, probably- so you go and grab some water.

It's pouring outside your house. And it's not the type that makes you cozy, it's the kind that makes you wish this wasn't your sick reality. It's the stupid idea that this is supposed to be anyone's home. It's the way your blood boils because you just want to talk to someone, and stop staring, frustrated, out your window. This is not a house, nor a home. It's just yours.

Your place, in the waves, on the sea, isolated.


End file.
